Identities of nearly 400 employees of Nassau County hospitals, colleges, school districts and villages were stolen and used to file false unemployment claims, according to Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas.
Her office said on Wednesday that the identity theft began in early March at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, and was undertaken by numerous fraud rings, which submitted false claims to the New York State Department of Labor using the stolen identities. These claims can result in weekly unemployment benefits payments ranging from $104 to $504, according to the office.
Working with the Department of Labor, the district attorney’s office is investigating the claims and whether a payout occurred. There is no evidence that any of the companies and organizations were hacked, according to the district attorney’s office.
“Criminals are seizing on a surge in job losses to steal unemployment benefits from employees working for Nassau County organizations and companies,” Singas said in a statement. “Not only are they stealing identities, but they’re trying to steal money earmarked for people who’ve lost their main source of income.”
Targets for these claims tend to be employees at the executive, managerial or professional level because those people tend to earn more money and would therefore receive more unemployment benefits, according to Singas’ office. They would also probably still be employed, not having applied for benefits themselves, and almost guaranteeing no duplication of claims between the real person and the fraudster.
Many victims did not know they had been affected until they received a letter from the state’s Department of Labor indicating that “their claim” for unemployment benefits had been approved, and some victims subsequently received a debit card loaded with unemployment benefit funds. In other cases, the debit cards were sent in the names of the victims to addresses controlled by fraudsters.
Singas’ office asks people who think they may have been a victim of this unemployment benefit scheme to contact the Financial Crimes Bureau at 516-571-2149.
Affected employees who are victims of identity theft are advised to immediately place a free fraud alert with one of the three national credit bureaus: Experian, Equifax and TransUnion.
